Deutsche Post AG’s inter-German parcel business still loss-stricken

Deutsche Post AG’s inter-German parcel business is evidently still loss-stricken. The German magazine ‘Wirtschaftswoche’ (6.2) reported that the loss amounts to around 2m euros per day, according to sources at board level. However, the post immediately denied the contents of the report, but the company’s press office declined to comment on the result and instead pointed to the positive overall result of the express segment, to which the parcel division belongs.

The post has not published any parameters for so-called freight mail (i.e. German parcel post) since 1999; instead, this information is grouped together with a number of different subsidiaries, e.g. the international letter service Global Mail and is published as the result for the express segment. The post had previously stated that its parcel business would be back in the black no later than 2000.

For several years the post’s business rivals have claimed that the inter-German parcel business showed heavy red ink. In the course of hearings in Brussels, the post was accused of unlawfully subsidising its parcel deficits with letter monopoly proceeds.